Monday Morning Open Thread

This NBC News article on the Oregon school graduating 21 valedictorians reminded me of a discussion we had on Facebook. Apparently, it is a trend for high schools to graduate more than one valedictorian, although the numbers, at least to me, seemed over the top: 21 at an Oregon school and 34 at an Alabama school.

That’s a lot of speeches to listen to in the hot sun. Oy.

And while that many valedictorians can leave even more students beaming on graduation day, here’s a group of folks not impressed: college admissions officers.

“Yes, it has definitely watered things down a little bit,” said Jim Rawlins, president of the National Association for College Admission Counseling. “Definitely, the more ultra-selective universities have to be more critical and skeptical of class ranks than before.

“The question is: Where do you cross the line? If a school has those extremely high-end numbers (of valedictorians), then I would quickly assume that grading isn’t very rigorous at all at that school,” added Rawlins, also the executive director of admissions at Colorado State University. “But I’m not sure I could say what number that needs to drop to for things to not seem out of whack to me again. Is five the limit? Three? Eight? I’m not sure. But my gut instinct as an admission director is that I’d start to wonder a bit even at four.”

What say you, MotherTalkers?

And today is Blogging for LGBT Families Day at Mombian. Both I and MomsRising’s North Carolina Campaign Director submitted blog posts for it. Please do read and leave a comment or two in support!

And finally, I’ve been following the story of “Beatriz” in El Salvador. She is a woman with lupus who is on her deathbed because the Catholic Church won’t let her have a life-saving C-Section. In El Salvador, abortion — and in this case, a c-section — is banned in all cases, including saving the life of a mother. Even my Catholic-practicing mother-in-law in El Salvador has said this is clearly a “case of a woman’s health” and has joined me in signing this Change.org petition. Please consider doing the same in a last-ditch effort to save this woman’s life.